Global Warming Is Not Being Treated Like an Emergency
Jacobin – March 17, 2023 – Adam McKay
https://jacobin.com/2023/03/adam-mckay-climate-change-emergency
Extreme change is happening much, much faster than we thought. Water and food shortages are already here. With dozens of events — including the frequency of winter tornadoes tripling in the American South — popping up every day, it’s clear we are dealing with a “right now” time frame. Nonetheless, governments, leaders of industry, the banking world, and large swaths of the news media have so far reacted like the blank-faced firemen in [tv fiction show] Pleasantville… Climate events every day make it clear that the escalation is happening much faster and more violently than anyone anticipated… Government leaders, the media, and heads of industry need to stop living in a world that fits their needs and feels familiar, and start living in the world as it is. The alternative is unimaginably grim.
Climate Change Is Speeding Toward Catastrophe. The Next Decade Is Crucial, U.N. Panel Says.
The New York Times – March 20, 2023 – Brad Plumer
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/20/climate/global-warming-ipcc-earth.html
The report, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of experts convened by the United Nations, offers the most comprehensive understanding to date of ways in which the planet is changing. It says that global average temperatures are estimated to rise 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels sometime around “the first half of the 2030s,” as humans continue to burn coal, oil and natural gas. That number holds a special significance in global climate politics: Under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, virtually every nation agreed to “pursue efforts” to hold global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Beyond that point, scientists say, the impacts of catastrophic heat waves, flooding, drought, crop failures and species extinction become significantly harder for humanity to handle. But Earth has already warmed an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius since the industrial age, and, with global fossil-fuel emissions setting records last year, that goal is quickly slipping out of reach… “The pace and scale of what has been done so far and current plans are insufficient to tackle climate change,” said Hoesung Lee, the chair of the climate panel. “We are walking when we should be sprinting.”
Senior Climate Activists Rally Across US to ‘Stop Dirty Banks’
Common Dreams – May 21, 2023 – Kenny Stancil
https://www.commondreams.org/news/senior-climate-activists-stop-dirty-banks
Held 24 hours after United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres—citing the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—called for an end to fossil fuel financing, the “Stop Dirty Banks” national day of action was organized by Third Act, an alliance of activists over the age of 60 co-founded by veteran campaigner Bill McKibben, and more than 50 other progressive advocacy groups. The first elderly-led mass climate demonstration in U.S. history, which featured more than 100 rallies around the country, aimed to pressure financial institutions to stop bankrolling the planet-heating pollution that scientists have linked to worsening extreme weather… Sierra Club executive director Ben Jealous warned that “the big banks feel beholden to an industry literally driving us toward human extinction.” “What we’re asking these banks to do,” said Jealous, “is to have the moral clarity to say to their clients, ‘You cannot keep expanding into the Arctic, you cannot keep expanding into the Gulf, you cannot keep drilling in Africa and throughout the globe. Because what you’re doing is putting our communities, our future, and the climate at risk.'” Closing out the rally in the nation’s capital, Jealous declared, “We must break the big banks’ addiction to Big Oil.”
New climate paper calls for charging big US oil firms with homicide
The Guardian – March 22, 2023 – Brian Kahn
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/22/big-oil-companies-homicide-harvard-environmental-law-review
Oil companies have come under increasing legal scrutiny and face allegations of defrauding investors, racketeering, and a wave of other lawsuits. But a new paper argues there’s another way to hold big oil accountable for climate damage: trying companies for homicide. The striking and seemingly radical legal theory is laid out in a paper accepted for publication in the Harvard Environmental Law Review. In it, the authors argue fossil fuel companies “have not simply been lying to the public, they have been killing members of the public at an accelerating rate, and prosecutors should bring that crime to the public’s attention”. “What’s on their ledger in terms of harm, there’s nothing like it in human history,” said David Arkush, the director of the climate program at consumer advocacy group Public Citizen and one of the paper’s authors.
English Lawyers Refuse to Prosecute Climate Protestors in ‘Declaration of Conscience’
EcoWatch – March 24, 2023 – Cristen Hemingway Jaynes
https://www.ecowatch.com/english-lawyers-climate-protestors-conscience-declaration.html
The group of about 120 lawyers, who go by the name “Lawyers are Responsible,” will also refuse to represent those participating in new fossil fuel projects. “Like big tobacco, the fossil fuel industry has known for decades what its activities mean. They mean the loss of human life and property – which the civil law should prevent but does not,” Director of the Good Law Project Jolyon Maugham, one of the key signatories of the declaration, wrote in The Guardian. “The scientific evidence is that global heating, the natural and inevitable consequence of its actions, will cause the deaths of huge numbers of people. The criminal law should punish this but it does not. Nor does the law recognise a crime of ecocide to deter the destruction of the planet. The law works for the fossil fuel industry – but it does not work for us.”
The world saw a record 9.6% growth in renewables in 2022
Electrek – March 21, 2023 – Michelle Lewis
https://electrek.co/2023/03/21/the-world-saw-a-record-9-6-growth-in-renewables-in-2022/
By the end of 2022, global renewable generation capacity amounted to 3,372 gigawatts (GW), growing the stock of renewable power by 295 GW or 9.6%, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). Renewables produced an overwhelming 83% of all power capacity added last year. Renewable Capacity Statistics 2023, released today by IRENA, shows that renewable energy continues to grow at record levels despite global uncertainties, confirming the downward trend of fossil fuels.
Where Mining and Energy Projects Will Hurt Wildlife the Most
Time Magazine – March 23, 2023 – Ciara Nugent
https://time.com/6265474/energy-mining-biodiversity-hotspots/
On the one hand, we want to protect more wildlife, having realized the critical role nature plays in limiting climate change and sustaining human life. On the other hand, we want to generate more energy than ever before for fast-developing countries in the Global South, and transition the entire world to renewables. That’s going to require a lot of new power plants and mines, which can be devastating for wildlife… “We recognise that infrastructure is essential to human development, but it’s about building smartly,” said Ash Simkins, a Zoology PhD student at the University of Cambridge who led the study. “This means ideally avoiding or otherwise minimizing infrastructure in the most important locations for biodiversity. If the infrastructure must be there, then it should be designed to cause as little damage as possible, and the impacts more than compensated for elsewhere.”
A New White House Plan Prioritizes Using the Ocean’s Power to Fight Climate Change
Inside Climate News – March 21, 2023 – Bob Berwyn
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/21032023/ocean-climate-action-plan-biden/
The first-ever U.S. Ocean Climate Action Plan released today recognizes that the planet can’t have a carbon-neutral future without healthy oceans—and that the oceans won’t be healthy unless the climate is stabilized. “In developing the Ocean Action Plan, we recognize that the ocean, land, and atmosphere are inherently interconnected,” the plan’s introduction concludes. Oceans cover about 70 percent of Earth’s surface. They generate 50 percent of the atmosphere’s oxygen, capture more than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases and absorb between 25 and 30 percent of human-caused carbon emissions, so their role in stabilizing the climate is critical. “This Ocean Climate Action Plan is the first comprehensive approach that the U.S. has taken to leveraging the power of the ocean in the fight against climate change,” said Jean Flemma, director of Ocean Defense Initiative. The plan could inspire a ripple of powerful climate actions that could reduce emissions, she added.
Antisemitism on Twitter has more than doubled since Elon Musk took over the platform
The Conversation – March 20, 2023 – Carl Miller
https://theconversation.com/antisemitism-on-twitter-has-more-than-doubled-since-elon-musk-took-over-the-platform-new-research-201830
Studying social media has shown me again and again just how powerfully it helps to form the cultures and ideas that underlie its users’ behavior. Ultimately, the proliferation of tweets that hold Jews responsible for all the world’s ills, that circulate dark conspiracies of control and cover-up, or that fire derogatory attacks directed toward Jews, can only support antisemitism online – and in the real world.
House Republicans’ Proposals Could Take Food Away From Millions of Low-Income Individuals and Families
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities – March 20, 2023 – Katie Bergh and Dottie Rosenbaum
https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/house-republicans-proposals-could-take-food-away-from-millions-of-low
Prominent Republicans have put forward several proposals to cut SNAP (the focus of this analysis) and there is a legislative vehicle to try to enact them: this year’s expected farm bill to reauthorize SNAP and other Agriculture Committee programs. Policymakers should reject these damaging proposals and instead focus on protecting and strengthening SNAP, including by improving benefit adequacy, expanding access for populations who have low incomes and are underserved by or excluded from SNAP, and enhancing customer service and modernization… Main Impact of Proposals That Take Food Assistance Away From People Who Don’t Show They Meet a Work Requirement Is to Increase Poverty and Hardship
Jay Powell kicked over a log, now everything’s crawling out
Ryan Grim’s blog – March 19, 2023
https://badnews.substack.com/p/jay-powell-kicked-over-a-log-now
Jay Powell hiking interest rates the past year is increasingly looking like a guy in the backyard kicking over a log, not prepared for everything crawling underneath. Think of quantitative easing and the loose money of the last decade as the rotting wood that hid and nourished a perfect ecosystem of corruption. If we look at the banks that have failed so far, we see a few common threads emerging, with fraud and Ponzi-like thinking at the heart of them. The question now will be how much of this toxic stuff there is tucked away inside other banks. If it’s largely isolated to the shadier side of the finance industry, the backstopping by the globe’s central banks might be enough to contain it.. The global banking system in the ‘90s began breaking away from the state, and that has significantly increased economic instability, widened inequality, produced a new class of oligarchs, and fueled a populist response around the world. It has also made tax collection in many countries more difficult. This is a chance to bring the banking industry to heel.
US banks want socialism for themselves – and capitalism for everyone else
The Guardian – March 19, 2023 – Robert Reich
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/19/svb-collapse-us-banks-socialism-capitalism
Recall that the 2008 financial crisis generated a gigantic shift of assets to the biggest Wall Street banks, with the result that JPMorgan and the other giants became far bigger. In the early 1990s, the five largest banks had accounted for only 12% of US bank deposits. After the crisis, they accounted for nearly half. After this week, they’ll be even bigger. Their giant size has already given them a huge but hidden effective federal subsidy estimated to be $83bn annually – a premium that investors and depositors willingly pay to these enormous banks, in the form of higher fees and lower returns, precisely because they’re considered too big to fail… As demonstrated again this past week, American capitalism needs strict guardrails. Otherwise, it is subject to periodic crises that summon bailouts. The result is socialism for the rich while everyone else is subject to harsh penalties: bankers get bailed out and the biggest banks and bankers do even better. Yet average people who cannot pay their mortgages lose their homes… Is it any wonder that many Americans see the system as rigged against them? Is it surprising that some become susceptible to dangerous snake-oil peddled by power-hungry demagogues?
Ruling with a Gavel and a Grudge
The Brennan Center – March 21, 2023 – Michael Waldman
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/ruling-gavel-and-grudge
Consider the consequences of when a single judge can make decisions with nationwide effects… After a hearing last week, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, Texas, is expected to soon rule on an outlandish demand to ban the use of the abortion pill mifepristone — medication used for more than half of all abortions in the United States. If the judge rules to revoke the decades-old FDA approval for the pill, he will affect not just women in Texas, but women in every state. How can a single federal judge have such power over the medical decisions of more than 167 million people? Believe it or not, the Supreme Court has never ruled on whether nationwide injunctions are constitutional. Liberals used this tactic on occasion to block the Trump administration’s policies, such as the single judge who blocked the “Muslim ban” in 2017. But conservatives have undeniably perfected it.
On Missing Dr. Strangelove
Tom Dispatch – March 19, 2023 – Andrew Bacevich
https://tomdispatch.com/on-missing-dr-strangelove/
With feature-length hyperbole — not a wisp of subtlety allowed — Dr. Strangelove made the case that a deep strain of madness had infected the entire U.S. national security apparatus. From the “War Room” that was the Pentagon’s holiest of holies all the way to the cockpit of a B-52 hurtling toward its assigned Russian target with a massive nuclear bomb in its belly, whack jobs were in charge… Of course, that was way back in the 1960s, ancient history as far as most Americans are concerned. Today, thanks to the wonders of advanced technology, U.S. intelligence and decision-making are much improved, right? Alas, recent screwups, including the disastrous termination of the Afghan War, don’t treat that claim kindly. A proxy war pitting the United States against a paranoid adversary with a massive nuclear arsenal at his command: What could possibly go wrong? Kubrick’s timeless masterpiece invites us to reflect on that question — and the sooner we do, the better.
Military buying more missiles and other weapons to fight China, Russia
Task & Purpose – March 14, 2023 – Jeff Schogol
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/us-military-missiles-munitions-china-russia/
If you had any doubt that the Defense Department is pivoting away from fighting terrorists to getting ready for the big war against China or Russia, just look at the missiles and other munitions that the military branches plan on buying in fiscal year 2024. The Department of the Navy in particular plans to invest in buying and upgrading a total of 830 of various types of Tomahawk missiles in the coming fiscal year, compared with the 552 Tomahawks that it procured for this fiscal year, according to the service’s proposed budget.
Pentagon Leaders Say New Budget Will Help Prepare for War With China
AntiWar – March 23, 2023 – Dave DeCamp
https://news.antiwar.com/2023/03/23/pentagon-leaders-say-new-budget-will-help-prepare-for-war-with-china/
The Pentagon identified China as the “most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security strategy” in the 2022 National Defense Strategy, and lately, US military leaders have been speaking more explicitly about how they’re preparing for a direct war with China despite the risk of nuclear war. President Biden has also vowed to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack.
The Not-So-Winding Road from Iraq to Ukraine
LA Progressive – March 15, 2023 – Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies
https://www.laprogressive.com/war-and-peace/iraq-to-ukraine
The U.S. record easily matches, or arguably far outstrips, the illegality and brutality of Russia’s crimes in Ukraine…. Mrch 19th marks the 20th anniversary of the U.S. and British invasion of Iraq. This seminal event in the short history of the 21st century not only continues to plague Iraqi society to this day, but it also looms large over the current crisis in Ukraine, making it impossible for most of the Global South to see the war in Ukraine through the same prism as U.S. and Western politicians. While the U.S. was able to strong-arm 49 countries, including many in the Global South, to join its “coalition of the willing” to support invading the sovereign nation of Iraq, only the U.K., Australia, Denmark and Poland actually contributed troops to the invasion force, and the past 20 years of disastrous interventions have taught many nations not to hitch their wagons to the faltering U.S. empire.
Ukraine and the Lessons of the Iraq War
Informed Comment – March 25, 2023 – John Feffer
https://www.juancole.com/2023/03/ukraine-lessons-iraq.html
The United States has lost a large measure of its global influence, thanks to its fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan. Have subsequent administrations learned the lessons of these misbegotten incursions?… All of which suggests that the “pro-peace” critics of Biden’s policy toward Ukraine—from the left and the right—are really the ones who have not internalized the lessons of the Iraq War. The refusal of the United States to make any serious post-invasion plans, the effort to occupy Iraq and dictate its political and economic future, the implicit belief that the invasion would solidify U.S. standing in the region—these all plunged Iraq into years and years of civil war. Anything short of drastically reducing Russian influence in Ukraine will condemn the country to the same.
20 Years After Illegal US Invasion of Iraq, Its Architects Are Still Cashing In
TruthOut – March 19, 2023 – Derek Seidman
https://truthout.org/articles/20-years-after-illegal-us-invasion-of-iraq-its-architects-are-still-cashing-in/
That the invasion was not just a moral catastrophe but an egregious war crime has been echoed by everyone from United Nations heads to human rights leaders. According to Brown University’s Costs of War project, over 300,000 people died in the war, the overwhelming bulk of them Iraqi civilians. These are only the counted: civilian deaths are certainly much higher. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis continue to suffer from a decades-long public and mental health calamity. Around 9.2 million Iraqis have been displaced. The war fractured any cohesion across Iraq and set the stage for massive levels of sectarian violence fueled by the U.S. Accounts of massacres like those in Mukaradeeb and Haditha and torture chambers like Abu Ghraib only touch the surface of the crimes committed against Iraqis.
Why are We There?
Informed Comment – March 24, 2023 – Juan Cole
https://www.juancole.com/2023/03/contractor-military-personnel.html
Biden Bombs Syria, after Drone Kills US Contractor, wounds 5 US Military Personnel… Most of the activities of these US troops and contractors in Syria are probably illegal in international law, and they are in constant danger of dragging the US into a wider conflict.
The Man Who Leaked the Pentagon Papers Is Scared
The New York Times – March 24, 2023 – Alex Kingsbury
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/24/opinion/international-world/ellsberg-nuclear-war-ukraine.html
I’m leaving a world in terrible shape and terrible in all ways that I’ve tried to help make better during my years. President Biden is right when he says that this is the most dangerous time, with respect to nuclear war, since the Cuban missile crisis. That’s not the world I hoped to see in 2023. And that’s where it is. I also don’t think the world is going to deal with the climate crisis. We’ve known, since the 2016 Paris agreement and before, that the U.S. had to cut our emissions in half by 2030. That’s not going to happen… We have seen nuclear weapons used many times. And they’re being used right now by both sides in Ukraine. They’re being used as threats, just as a bank robber uses a gun, even if he doesn’t pull the trigger. You’re lucky if you can get your way in some part without pulling the trigger. And we’ve done that dozens of times. But eventually, as any gambler knows, your luck runs out. For 70 years, the U.S. has frequently made the kind of wrongful first-use threats of nuclear weapons that Putin is making now in Ukraine. We should never have done that, nor should Putin be doing it now. I’m worried that his monstrous threat of nuclear war to retain Russian control of Crimea is not a bluff. President Biden campaigned in 2020 on a promise to declare a policy of no first use of nuclear weapons. He should keep that promise, and the world should demand the same commitment from Putin.
Distinguishing Between a Chinese Challenge and a Chinese Enemy
Robert Reich’s Substack – Marchb 24, 2023
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-difference-between-a-chinese
I don’t want to make light of the challenge China represents to the United States, but the greatest danger America faces today is not coming from China. It is our drift toward proto-fascism. We must take care not to demonize China so much that we generate paranoia that further distorts our priorities, fuels American nativism and xenophobia, and encourages authoritarianism at home. There’s a difference between seeing China as challenging American technological and economic dominance, on the one hand, and viewing China as potentially threatening America’s existence. The former is correct, and can be beneficial if it induces further investments in American education, basic research, and infrastructure — on which our future standard of living depends. The latter leads to zero-sum strategies and possible warfare… The question for America — ever more diverse but more deeply divided than in generations — is whether it is possible to rediscover our identity and mutual responsibilities without creating another enemy.
Gideon v. Wainwright Was a Landmark Decision, but Women Invented the Idea of the Public Defender
Portside – March 25, 2023 – Emily Galvin-Almanza
https://portside.org/2023-03-25/gideon-v-wainwright-was-landmark-decision-women-invented-idea-public-defender
s a public defender — and a person fighting to expand and empower public defense nationwide — March is always a big month for me. March 18 is the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark Gideon v. Wainwright decision, when the justices unanimously said that the US Constitution requires states comply with the Sixth Amendment and provide people with a lawyer when they’re criminally accused and unable to afford counsel… March is also Women’s History Month, and as a woman defender, every time Gideon’s Day rolls around, my mind turns to our own forgotten history. When we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Gideon ruling this year — recognizing the right to counsel as having been conferred by Gideon’s brave persistence and Justice Hugo Black’s insight and resolve — we are erasing a far longer and richer legacy: the history of the women who invented the idea of the public defender.
Union of Southern Service Workers Is Organizing Low-Wage Workers Across Industries
Portside – March 21, 2023 – Kim Kelly
https://portside.org/2023-03-21/union-southern-service-workers-organizing-low-wage-workers-across-industries
At a time when public support for labor unions is at its highest since 1965, and thousands of workers in a vast array of industries are organizing, striking, and winning, the Union of Southern Service Workers seems right on time. Members’ vision of one big union for the entire service industry is revolutionary in scope, but it also makes perfect sense: Without workers, nothing gets done. Their demands are not only reasonable, they may even be a little modest. “I want workers to realize, it’s a system that was made by people,” DeArmon says. “We can unmake it. It’s possible to do that. It’s possible to make huge changes, but we have to come together. It’s never going to change unless workers organize and demand it.”
Where Mutual Aid Comes to Its Own Assistance
Yes! Magazine – March 20, 2023 – Shane Burley
https://www.yesmagazine.org/democracy/2023/03/20/housing-mutual-aid
Mutual aid is political. By creating a community institution where everyone receives support equally and everyone is invited to participate, organizers not only fill the gaps in the social safety net, they also demonstrate what a more caring society could look like. Mutual aid projects—like Food Not Bombs, which emerged from the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s and is known for providing food to houseless communities and activist events alike—are essential for providing larger social movements the resources they need to keep activists involved… mutual aid groups like Food Not Bombs have been essential not just for sustaining the communities that depend on them, but also for building the kinds of relationships that all social movement work is founded on. So fighting back against state repression again means fortifying those relationships, gaining support from the wider public, reaching out to legal organizations for assistance, and even finding allies among local leaders. “Build alliances with other homeless support groups if you can,” says Parson. “Make it as public as you can. … It does seem to turn the brakes on city campaigns.” If mutual aid depends on relationships, then expanding and growing the strength of those relationships can be what helps them weather the storm.